this dale jr. fan is not delusional, contrary to popular belief

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I take great exception with Shawn Courchesne at the Hartford Courant and his latest headline.

A cursory search of Youtube on Sunday evening would turn up a plethora of replays showing the two drivers making contact in the corner while fighting for the lead, Clint Bowyer going below both to take over the lead and Earnhardt spinning off toward the wall while Busch kept on going in second place.

Some of the titles on those videos?

“Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets screwed out of a win”

“Kyle Busch spins out Dale Jr. ON PURPPOSE”

It begs the question, when did Earnhardt Jr. become the biggest sympathy case of the Sprint Cup Series?

The answer is that he never did. People would say the same thing if Kyle had been the one to be spun out. I am a huge Dale Jr. fan and if it had been Denny Hamlin that was spun out I would say he got screwed too (and he actually was because of his blown tire).

There are always people out there that are going to take things to the extreme and always believe that everyone is out to get their driver. But I would like to believe that most people know that in this instance that wasn’t the case. He was screwed, but that’s a part of racing.

To say that Dale Jr. is becoming a charity case is absolutely ridiculous. To say that about any driver is insanity. We all know that no one is going to hand over a race to anyone and we wouldn’t expect them to do so. Dale, just like all of the drivers out there every weekend, is doing whatever he can to win.

Oh and Courchesne has this little nugget to add:

Earnhardt Jr. fits much more the mold of the average modern day Sprint Cup Series driver than his father ever did. Like so many of his contemporaries in the Sprint Cup Series today Junior seems much more marketing monster than hard nosed racer.

Using Dale’s popularity and marketing power against him is a weak way to go. If he’d never won a race he would of never had the ability to make those deals, and to say that he’s only about that (or imply it) is lame.

Ya know, maybe Kyle Busch does have a little bit of the Intimidator’s spirit in him, but Dale Jr. wouldn’t have been in the position to get spun out if he wasn’t a hard nosed racer in the first place.